*** Let u op de periode: 2000-2005. Zie het interessante artikel over cooking the books (feb. 2015) als u geïnteresserd bent:
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Greece’s application for EU membership in 1999 was rejected because its budget deficit in relation to its GDP was over 3 percent, the cutoff line for joining. That’s where Goldman Sachs came in. For a fee rumored to be $200 million (some say three times that), the multinational giant essentially cooked the books to make Greece look like it cleared the bar. Then Greece’s political and economic establishment hid the scheme until the 2008 crash shattered the illusion.
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“And yet, OECD data among its members show that in 2008, Greeks worked on average 2120 hours a year. That is 690 hours more than the average German, 467 more than the average Brit and 356 more than the OECD average. Only Koreans work longer hours”

“This shortfall cannot explain how more money is needed after €110bn was provided just a year ago. The answer is, of course, that the money was provided not to Greece, but to its creditors (BANKS!!!!) . These are European – including British – banks, who have been paid to exit the Greek debt markets. All the solvent banks took their money and ran while only the needy or the greedy remain.”
—the banks man, it’s the banks (and kamp)

“The first bail-out was designed to help Greek people, but unfortunately failed. It was not. The first bail-out was designed to stabilise and buy time for the Eurozone. It was designed to avoid another Lehman-Bros-type market shock, at a time when financial institutions were too weak to withstand it.”
—the banks man, it’s the banks (and kamp)

en dit ook: project-syndicate.org“Why should the Greek people (not to mention the Irish and the Portuguese) accept years of austerity and slow growth for the sake of propping up the French and German banking systems, unless they are given huge bribes to do so?”
by: Kenneth Rogoff is Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Harvard University, and was formerly chief economist at the IMF.
—the banks man, it’s the banks (and kamp)

etc etc

Looks like role of the banks should get a little bit more attention in the ‘normal’ media…